I guess they will go after Aladan and the flying carpet next
Zi Acquires the Magic Lantern Group of Companies to Complement its Oztime
e-Learning Investment
CALGARY, ALBERTA--Zi Corporation (NASDAQ: ZICA) (TSE: ZIC), a leading provider
of intelligent interface solutions, today announced it has acquired all of the
shares of Magic Lantern Communications Ltd., an established Canadian education
products and services provider.
"The acquisition of Magic Lantern provides Zi with a North American-based
company with which we can leverage our relationships in China and capitalize on
our Oztime investment. It is Zi's current intention to monetize our e-learning
investment through a separate public company," said Michael E. Lobsinger,
Chairman and CEO of Zi Corporation. "The complementary businesses of Magic
Lantern and Oztime provide us with the opportunity to source North American
content for the Chinese market and a strong international management team with
depth and breadth of experience."
Magic Lantern was founded in 1975 and is one of Canada's leading distributors
of educational content, including videos. The company has exclusive
distribution rights to over 300 film producers representing over 14,000 titles,
and its customers include 9,000 out of 12,000 English schools in Canada,
Canadian Learning Television, TV Ontario and History Television. In addition,
Tutorbuddy Inc., a subsidiary of Magic Lantern acquired in the transaction, is
an internet-based content-delivery service that provides content and related
educational services on-demand to students, teachers and parents. Magic
Lantern's content and Tutorbuddy's technology will be highly complementary to
the Oztime offering in China. Sonoptic Technologies Inc., the second Magic
Lantern subsidiary acquired by Zi, provides high-quality, state-of-the-art
digital video encoding services and has developed a proprietary videobase
indexing software that allows users to easily and quickly aggregate, bookmark,
re-sort and add their own comment boxes to pre-existing content.
The Magic Lantern group of companies generated approximately $5 million of
annual revenues during their last fiscal year, was profitable before
non-recurring costs, and was acquired for a price equivalent to one-half times
annual revenue. Zi completed the Magic Lantern transaction by acquiring
MagicVision Media Inc. with the issuance of 100,000 common shares of Zi, a
certain portion of which are subject to performance escrow based on revenues,
and paying approximately $2 million to subscribe for shares of MagicVision.
These subscription proceeds were used to facilitate the management buyout by
MagicVision of the Magic Lantern group of companies.
All dollars amounts are expressed in Canadian funds.
About Zi Corporation
Zi Corporation (www.zicorp.com) is a market-driven technology company
delivering intelligent interface solutions to enhance the user experience of
wireless and consumer technologies. The company's core technology product,
eZiText connects people to short messaging, e-mail, e-commerce, Web browsing
and similar applications in almost any language. Zi supports its strategic
partners from offices in Calgary, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, San Francisco,
Shenzhen and Stockholm. A publicly traded company, Zi Corporation is listed on
the NASDAQ National Market (ZICA) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ZIC). |
